Cabezotas are portraits and self-portraits (paintings, drawings or sculptures) that, apparently, only have a head, but with with the capacity of transformation that is necessary for them to express what is really happening to them; otherwise, contained in the oval that draws them, they remain silent.

At a given moment, this oval, in its upper part, becomes entangled in a knot, in a scribble: the outline of an eye; the only anatomical feature that prevails in all the cabezotas as an identifying sign of their presence. From this point on, the need of each cabezota to transmit what he has lived makes other strokes, brushstrokes or masses that describe mouths, tongues, teeth, brains, hands, feet, sex… emerge.

The cabezotas, in their oldest version, appeared many years ago to express moments, situations, experiences, thoughts, feelings, reflections, worries... that I saw in different people that in one way or another affected my life or that I experienced in my own skin.

It has always been like this, the cabezotas have been by my side throughout my life fulfilling their function of painting and painting me, of showing and showing me, but their presence, except on rare occasions, has been restricted to the private sphere of the workshop, or the computer, or papers, notebooks and sketchbooks.

However, they cry out to me to be outside and emptying myself of that urgency, I paint them and let them out.

 

— José Carlos Balanza, July 2024

 

More information about the exhibition “Cabezotas” by the artista José Carlos Balanza at our Instagram @galeriaespaicavallers